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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Last spring I posted comments on some design problems of the new French National Library, but said nothing about functional anomalies. You would think that the Library, like other academic institutions, would be happy when its librarians, curators or other staff received invitations to international meetings, exhibitions, study programs, exchanges, familiarization trips, etc., the more so if the foreign sponsors paid the expenses. A feather in their career caps, right? Wrong. More important than incentives are control, oversight, hierarchy; in short, blockage. The memorandum below, sent to all staff by the President of the French National Library at the end of July, indicates the atmosphere that must reign. The scornful opening phrase reveals the mood of distrust, as if for, "facts that have come to my attention," one should read, "you tried to get away with something, but I found out." Then he shoots himself in the foot by giving an official character statements made by French Library staff on visits abroad, something host institutions would hardly have assumed before. Guests, speakers, etc., from the French National Library can now be thought to represent policy or to be dissimulating: the antithesis of collegial academic exchange. There is no question of an employer's right to require approval and appropriate arrangements for time away from work, but this infantilization of experienced and qualified professionals is prior constraint of a different kind. It reminds me of the practices in the old Soviet Union, where a hopeful traveler faced an interview before a Party committee to see if he would be a suitable reflection of the country. The hitch was that committee members were often jealous because THEY were not going to make the coveted foreign trip. Rest assured there is always the risk that when an invitation passes through the French National Library hierarchy as the President insists, it can get intercepted by a higher-up who may try to go in the place of the person invited! As the French National Library begins a new stage of its existence, it has to decide if its staff are a layered bureaucracy or academic professionals. Unless it is the latter, it can stop mouthing theories of a new "encylopedisme." It would just be chanting platitudes. THE MEMORANDUM TEXT As a result of facts that have come to my attention, I wish to remind you of the rules that apply concerning participation of agents of the French National Library in international activities. Given the possibility that these activities might commit the Library, it is appropriate that the hierarchically responsible administrators and the central management be informed in advance. In particular, it is not for the agents of the library to solicit invitations or financial support, on their own initiative, from French or foreign institutions. Eric Fenster